A few hours after the State Government enforced the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), members of four associations — Urja Officers, Supervisors and Staff Associations, Uttarakhand Power Engineers’ Association, Urja Kamgaar Sangathan and Power Junior Engineer Association — called off their partial boycott of work on Tuesday evening.
The thaw came after secretary (Power), Radhika Jha assured them that the State Government would act on their demands in a month. The members of the four unions demanded among others release of a corrected government order (GO) on implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations. They had boycotted work partially for the past few days to pressure the administration to take note of their grievances.
It is learnt that Jha has formed a committee to look into the grievances of the agitators. The committee would submit its report in a month, said Uttarakhand Power Corporation limited (UPCl) media in-charge and chief engineer AK Singh on Tuesday, adding that the meeting of Jha with the members of the agitating unions has led the latter to call off the partial boycott of work.
On the previous few days, the protesters had switched off their mobile phones after working till 6 pm and stayed away from work till 10 pm.
The government had come down heavily on the agitators which included the officers like the chief executive as well as the linesmen on Monday night not just by enforcing ESMA but by directing the department officers to make way for the arrest of the protesters and to slap penalty on them if they continued with their partial work boycott.
Jha had earlier on Monday directed all power managing directors to ensure smooth power supply by enforcing ESMA strictly after power outages had been reported from several places in the state. later in the same day, the state administration had called a meeting with the protesters which the latter had boycotted.
The protesters had stuck to the point that they would stay away from such meeting until the administration issued a fresh GO replacing the earlier one to have their grievances redressed. The protesters had further said that they would not celebrate Diwali this time by way of venting their anger with the state government sitting on their demands.
The GO released by the State Government following approval of the cabinet on the implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission had outraged a large section of the power department employees. They had dubbed it as discriminatory and demanded correction of the discriminatory provisions in the GO. Besides, the decision to stop fresh recruitment in all the three corporations had angered the employees.
The agitators had made it clear that they would not allow the administration to execute the GO in its present form.